Give My Gun Away When It's Loaded
by Metarie
Summary: He misses her when she's gone. He misses her when she's not gone, because it feels like she is. Always staring off into the middle distance, like she's daydreaming, or remembering. Sequel to "Your Gentle Eyes Like a Razorblade." Robert/Ariadne.


_**Disclaimer: Not mine.  
A/N: BEGONE, FOUL BEAST. This was so hard to write, for some reason. I hope you get some enjoyment out of it, though. :)**_

_**

* * *

**_

He wakes up in the middle of the night and discovers he's alone. Half awake, Robert splays his hand out on the sheets beside him, and it's cold.

He finds her in her study, pouring over blueprints of one of her projects. Robert's lost count of how many there are. For the last year she's been immersed, throwing herself into the work with everything she has.

"Ariadne," he says, sleepily. "Don't you ever sleep?" He goes to her, kissing the top of her head.

"Only when you're not looking," she says.

"Come to bed," he says.

It takes her a moment to answer. "I will," she says.

Robert falls back asleep alone.

* * *

Robert hasn't been on the best terms with Browning. They barely speak anymore, and when they do it quickly dissolves into arguments about the company, the future, who knew what was best and _what would your father think_ and cue Robert storming out in a hazy rage.

The last time they saw each other in the flesh was at Robert's wedding. It had been a surprise when he'd shown up - the'd sent the invitation only as a courtesy. But he was there in the crowd at the ceremony, and though Robert was too happy in love to spend much time dwelling on it, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of frustration.

Finally, during the reception, after Ariadne had excused herself to freshen up in the restroom, Browning approached him. Robert expected hollow congratulations, a formal and polite exchange of small talk, but when Browning shook his hand, he grasped it tightly and said, "Are you happy, son?"

Robert blinked, surprised, but he said, "I am, Uncle Peter. I'm very happy. She makes me feel whole."

Browning smiles, but it's sad and resigned. "Careful, there," he said. And then he was gone.

* * *

One night, when Ariadne is gone away on business - he assumes for one of her projects, he can't think what else it could be - Robert gets plastered and remembers this. _Careful there._

He calls him. "Uncle Peter," he slurs. "What am I supposed to be careful about?"

A long silence. "I don't think she's who you think she is," he says finally.

"Who is she then?" Because he can't imagine her as anyone else.

"I don't know," says Uncle Peter. "I don't know anything."

The line goes dead.

* * *

He misses her when she's gone. He misses her when she's not gone, because it feels like she is. Always staring off into the middle distance, like she's daydreaming, or remembering.

"Is everything okay?" he asks her at breakfast one morning. She's fiddling with an old chess bishop, tipping it over, righting it, tipping it over.

Ariadne looks up, and she smiles, her face so full of warmth that it almost startles him. "Everything is fine," she says. She leans over and kisses him, softly at first, and then deeper. When she pulls away, they're both breathless.

"Later," she says. "Later. I have to work."

"So do I," says Robert. "But it can wait."

Ariadne laughs, then bites her lip. "I wish." She brushes his hair back from his face, trying to smooth it where she ran her fingers through it moments ago.

"I love you," he says.

"I love you too," she says. "Don't forget it."

* * *

His dreams have been intoxicating since his father died. They start out as nightmares, he's a prisoner, bound and gagged on someone's balcony and it's freezing, though it seems like it shouldn't be. And then Ariadne, always Ariadne, finding him and telling him _you're okay. You're okay._ He has other dreams, he knows he must, but he never remembers them because he always ends up here.

One night, it changes. Just slightly - Ariadne fires a gun off, somewhere he can't see, at someone he can't hear. Then she turns and kicks him off, sending him plummeting.

He wakes with a start. Ariadne's there, next to him, sleeping soundly for a change, and the way he curls himself around her is automatic. Robert breathes in the smell of her hair and tries to relax. _Only a dream,_ he tells himself.

* * *

He walks in on Ariadne having a hushed phone conversation. She doesn't notice him.

"There are plenty of architects in the world. You don't need me. No. I won't do that to anyone again. Please don't call me again." She hangs up, flustered.

"Who was that?" Robert asks, and she jumps.

"No one," she says. "Just... an old colleague of mine, from forever ago. Nobody."

Later, when Robert finds her phone plugged into the charger, he can't help himself. He calls the number back.

"Changed your mind?" asks the voice on the other end, and there's a hint of smugness in it.

"Who is this?" asks Robert.

A long pause.

"I'm sorry, I think you have a wrong number."

"You spoke with my wife," Robert starts to say, but there's no one there anymore.

* * *

He goes over the facts:  
1. He loves Ariadne.  
2. Ariadne loves him.  
3. Ariadne is hiding something from him.

Robert isn't a naturally suspicious person. His father told him again and again that this was a weakness, that the best businessmen are the most suspicious, that you can only trust people you already know you can't trust at all.

He picks up his phone and calls Browning. "What do I do?" he asks, because he's too busy trying to keep his heart from breaking to think clearly.

"I know some people," says Browning.

* * *

The man called Cobb tries to talk him out of it when they meet for the first time. He doesn't normally deal with domestic situations, he says. He says they can get ugly, and inevitably things are uncovered that need to stay buried. He tells him everyone deserves their secrets.

"It's not just a secret," Robert says, irritably. "It's not just some embarrassing story about what her mother made her dress up as for Halloween when she was nine." He sighs, trying to regain his composure. "Look, I'll pay you more money than you'll make in ten lifetimes. If you won't do it, I'll get someone else. Do you agree or not?"

Cobb looks to his partner, a thin man in a suit who up to this point hasn't said a word. The other man shrugs. "It's your marriage to ruin," he says.

* * *

There was only one condition: Robert goes in with them.

Cobb is adamantly opposed to this. "We go in alone, or we don't go in at all," he says.

"Speak for yourself," says Arthur.

Cobb's face is set as he turns around and walks away.

"Guess it's just the two of us now," says Robert, and an uncomfortable laugh escapes his lips.

Arthur does not smile. "Quite," he says.

* * *

The dreamscape is a bustling city street - the street is Arthur's, the bustling Ariadne's - and when Robert comes into awareness he's immediately swept away by the flow of the crowd. He scans faces, looking for anything or anyone familiar, but they are all generic, projections of people that don't exist.

He finds Ariadne walking, wandering aimlessly, and he follows her, at a distance, wondering all the while where Arthur is. Eventually they come to a hotel, and she climbs staircase after staircase until, on the fifth floor, she goes to room 528. She goes in and leaves the door open.

Robert watches from the doorway as she opens up a safe. She takes out a large envelope and stares down at it. It takes him a moment to realize she's crying.

"Ariadne?" he says, unable to stop himself.

"I wish you hadn't come," she sobbed. "I wish you'd stayed away."

He's regretting this already, feeling slimy and cruel for this unwarranted invasion of her mind, wanting to go to her so he does, but she recoils from his touch.

"Arthur's with you, isn't he?" she says, bitterly. "That's why it's this hotel. That's why we're here. No imagination." She laughs, but it's humorless. Robert has never seen her like this.

"How do you know that?" he asks, bewildered. "How do you know who he is?"

She thrusts the envelope at him. "Here. It's here. All of it. Read it. I won't let it rule me. Not anymore."

He takes it. "It doesn't feel very heavy."

"It will if you open it." she says grimly, and her gaze shifts to somewhere over his shoulder. "Hurry up, though." She produces a gun out of nowhere and aims it - Robert turns and sees Arthur, who is leaning against the door frame, face unreadable. "I don't know how long I'll be able to wait."

* * *

When Robert wakes up, he hears shouting, and he covers his face with his hands, pressing his fingers over his eyes to keep them from leaking. This is not what he expected. Not what he expected at all.

"How could you do this? How could you agree to this?" Ariadne is frightening when she's angry, and despite her size and the fact that her hair is mussed and she's wearing her pajamas, she has Arthur cowed. "Are you here alone? Where's Cobb?"

"He backed out last minute."

"And you went ahead with it? Despite how it would affect him? Or me? Or Robert? You are fucking unbelievable."

"Were you planning on telling him about it? About us?"

"There's no _us,_ Arthur," Ariadne snaps. "Go. Right now. Please, just go."

Robert still isn't looking, but he hears the pause, then the footsteps over the wooden floor and the slam of their door downstairs. Arthur is gone, and they are alone.

Finally he takes a deep breath, rubbing his eyes one last time before looking up. He sees Ariadne, sitting on their bed, arms wrapped around herself, motionless, and it is an image that terrifies him. He is afraid he has broken her. He is afraid - absurdly - that he has lost her. Despite everything he just learned, the lies she helped put in his mind and the subsequent affair - despite all of it. He is afraid this is irreparable.

"Ariadne," he says softly, then he gets up and goes to her.

Her face is tear stained and pale, illuminated by the moonlight streaming in from the open window.

"You despise me now," she says, face turned away from him. It is not a question.

"No," says Robert, truthfully.

Ariadne puts a hand on her knee, open and palm up. She seems to be trying to stretch it apart. "But have I lost you," she whispers.

* * *

Robert was never a ladies' man. He was too busy, too distant, too awkward for that. Too much on his mind. Before Ariadne, his last serious relationship was in college - the last time he let himself be himself. It ended because she needed him more than he needed her.

He isn't used to needing people. He learned to switch that off when his mother died. It's better not to need people. The people you need have power over you. The people you need can hurt you.

Somehow Ariadne slipped past all his defenses. Somehow needing her doesn't hurt. Not even now. It all comes back to the tower in the storm - _you're okay,_ she says to him. _You're okay._

He's still okay. She's still here. She could have left. She could have destroyed him. She didn't.

* * *

Robert wraps his arms around her.

"Ariadne," he says. "It was only a dream."


End file.
